Life — November 21, 1912 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘EPP E « Billie’s Poster Lady ILLIE saw her first framed in a window, over which she had drawn up a red and white striped, foreign- looking awning. A_ long green window-box stretched across the wide sill, and in exact dis- tances, the one from the other, there were little splutters of brilliant red geranium blooms. This completed the idea of a frame, and Billie being an artist, longed to paint her, whoever she might be, just like that. She reminded him of one of the more modern Madonnas that he had seen in the Luxembourg—a Boucher he thought it was. Her bloused waist of some thin white stuff was open at the throat and turned up tO her elbows. Her pose was perfect meditation, the eyes turned toward the sky. She rarely moved for maybe a half to three-quarters of an hour. She fitted in exactly with what Bil- lie called his poster mood. It came to him every evening when he had fin- ished the dinner. With a cigarette, he used to see his pictures in the fire on the hearth in winter, but in the spring and summer and fall, he looked out, and the roofs, the sky, the bits of life he saw all took on a certain detached quality. Even a line of laundry flap- ping, a flag drifting on its pole, a gust of rain slanting across his vision, a fall of mist across a tower, or a steeple, or the top of a skyscraper, he saw with a sort of clairvoyant vision that made them more interesting than such things ever are, really, except pos- sibly to the futurists or the impres sionists and, above all, the posterists. It was early spring when he dis- covered her from his eyrie near the stars. Romance was stirring in the breeze, an organ was emitting the Bar- carolle from Tales of Hoffman, far below in the street, and she was lis- tening, a mysterious figure on his horizon. Every evening she came to the win- dow and had her contemplative hour. He made a little sketch of her and de- cided he would paint in the color, the awning, the flowers, the buff of the walls and the calm face raised to the sky. He knew it would make a stun- ning study. Along in the early July something happened which startled him. One day just at dusk he noticed the girl exe- euting a series of the weirdest ma- neuvers, It was not a calisthenic exer- cise, and it puzzled him for a while until he realized that she was practis- ing one of the new posture dances. She would leap ahout the apartment. sometimes rising s al feet from the floor. She would tear up one side of the room and drop suddenly. Then she would steal stealthily down cen- ter and make a quick turn fiercely right or left, ending with a high jump that almost took Billie’s breath away. It was not exactly graceful, he had to admit. Some of the poses were awk- ward. But it was terribly impassioned and of course it had meaning. evening she kept it up. She carried at times a scarf of white that she flung around in maddened abandon. A, she substituted a light wand with which (Continued on page 2 See the Modern Family Physician BE, HE no longer rides in an old fashioned buggy, OF and looks at your tongue. He comes in an auto, and talks of everything else but you. He is the first one to arrive on the scene, He designates the par- ticular specialist you shall employ. Docs he make moncy doing His rake-off on one visit is more than an old fash- ioned round of them. Besides, he takes no chances. Al he does is to look you over and pigeonhole you. The telephone does the rest. As a commission merchant, he has a dry goods drum- mer beaten to a frazzle. His expenses are so light that he doesn’t have to buy instruments. His only equipment is a reflecting mirror, a clinical thermometer and a telephone list He is the advance agent of all operations. Pat Doctor: axe YOU ANEMIC, PAT? NO, POCTOR—IRISH. SION ar LAP S| ST Set = Ere fain aoa comicbooneom